AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
ALEX
My eyes fly open as I take a sudden gasp for breath, my chest heaving with the effort even as a weight presses down on me. Fuck, where the hell am I?
I blink, the whiteness that surrounds me almost blinding.
My body feels numb and for a second I wonder if I’m paralyzed; maybe dead.
I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, a hard beat against my rib cage as I try to move. But I’m boxed in, my body somehow trapped.
I open my mouth and try to suck in another lungful of air. The pain hits me immediately, almost winding me as I try. The air is so fucking cold, and it hurts to breathe, but I force myself to do it again.
And again.
I’m freezing and I know I need to get up, but my legs and arms don’t seem to want to work. I try to look around, but I can’t see anything, my surroundings are nothing but white.
“Fuck,” I groan, swallowing hard as I try again. “Fuck!”
My voice sounds louder this time, but the silence that follows feels deafening. And it’s in that instant that I’m hit with the sudden reminder of everything that happened.
Being on that far mountain, trying to clear the skiers. The weird cracking sound that was unbelievably loud, before a sudden whoosh surrounded us, like a fucking tornado was tearing through the valley.
I remember turning, the feeling of absolute terror as I realized what was about to happen, as we both—
Fuck.
Delaney.
Delaney was with me.
I force another lungful of air in, ignoring the pain as I command my arms and legs to work. Groaning at the effort it takes, I push against the weight of a fuckload of snow and ice, as I finally get a glimpse of the sky. The dusk sky that’s about to get very dark as the sun sinks below the horizon.
Oh jesus, shit, this is not good. We can’t be out here at night. We’ll fucking freeze to death.
Crawling out of the snow I’ve been buried in, I manage to stand, my hands on my knees as I suck in deep lungfuls of air, forcing myself to breathe through the pain. My poles are long gone, but I’ve still got my skis on, although weirdly the one on the right is broken. I reach down and unclip them, realizing as I do that my backpack is still strapped to my shoulders, thank god. Something in my left shoulder hurts too, but I ignore it, knowing I don’t have time for pain right now.
I stand up, straightening as I take another deep breath before opening my mouth.
“DELANEY!”
The sound seems to echo back at me, while at the same time disappear into the distance, as though sucked into some kind of weird black hole. I glance around, desperate to find her, but I can’t see anything but snow and trees and fuck, the light is really fading fast. Where the hell is she?
“DELANEY!” I scream again, my voice already hoarse.
Somewhere in the distance I hear a cracking sound and for a second I’m paralyzed with fear that another avalanche is about to hit. I freeze, holding my breath as I wait to be swept off the mountain again, my body pounded with snow and ice and rocks like it was before.
But nothing happens.
“Fuck,” I breathe out, relieved. I prop my skis up in the snow as a marker or beacon or something, to let people know I was here. Beacon, shit, my avalanche beacon. I glance down, my gloved hands patting at my jacket, desperate to find the lifeline to us getting rescued.
But it’s gone.
“Fuck,” I curse again, kicking at the snow in frustration. How the hell have I lost the one thing that can possibly save us? The one thing I was told to never leave behind.
I turn in a circle, desperate as I pat my jacket again, hoping that somehow my beacon is still here. I feel the hard shape of something in my jacket pocket and exhaling in relief, I unzip it and grab it, only to find it’s not my beacon or my phone but my fucking lift key and ID badge. Reaching up to my helmet, I find my headlamp is also gone and I tear at the chin strap in frustration, throwing my helmet into the snow.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, frustrated at having somehow lost the two things that could have potentially saved us, as I shove the key and ID badge back into my pocket and turn toward the trees, having no clue how to even begin looking for her.
